Echoes Along the Seine

The Pont Alexandre III.

An Excerpt from 'Hemingway's Paris and
Pamplona, Then and Now'

by Robert F.
Burgess

Paris:- Whenever Ernest Hemingway wrote about
Paris, the Seine River was always part of it, whether he
mentioned it or not. Anyone who has ever lived in Paris is
aware of the important role the river plays.

It has been said that Paris makes love to the Seine.
This is true. Parisians embrace their river with intense
affection. Artists and lovers have always found this broad,
meandering river with its wide stone quais, arched stone
bridges, shade trees and many marble benches for lovers and
admirers one of the reasons Paris is such a romantic,
unforgettable feast for all the senses. Paris is the Seine
is Paris even though Miss Stein may never have said it.
Yet, nothing is truer.

Over time, some things about this river have changed,
but not much. Its waters may still be polluted, but its
pale greenness makes it look clean. The steady stream of
noisy automobiles, motor scooters and high-rise buses that
whiz over the bridges or get stalled on them, besmirches
some of the pleasant scenery.

But in the past it was the slower, more prolonged noise
of galloping hooves, smelly, horse-drawn carriages and
freight wagons with thundering wheels. Today's clouds of
gagging exhaust fumes are health-threatening, and the
people pollution is worse than ever. But that's about all
that has changed. Thankfully, not too much else disturbs
the Seine's peaceful natural
beauty. With luck she may make it into the 21st Century
relatively intact.

For the 'Fêtes de la Seine'
in September, the smokestacks reappear.

To see the river and its trappings in its natural guise
you have to get up early in the morning and go look at it.
Even if it's just from your hotel balcony. Best view
however is at street level, perhaps from a bridge such as
le Pont du Carrousel looking toward the sunrise and L'Ile
de la Cité. If you are early enough, most vehicles
will still be doing what they do so well in the depths of
someone's underground garage, or they will simply be curbed
and quiet. Then if you are really lucky, you may see what
makes this Grande Dame of a city so special.

Seen in early morning mists on a bright morning in May,
this is the scene that artists have painted and poets have
rhapsodized over from time immemorial. It is the exact same
scene, with slight variations of course, that young Ernest
Hemingway saw on many mornings he walked along the Seine
wondering if he would ever learn to write well enough to
make a good living.

Nothing really has changed today. Writers and artists
still walk the Seine pondering these questions. The sun
still rises over the River Seine and the event is as
spectacular as ever. As dawn turns the eastern sky a
glowing pale rosé, the morning mists rise up like
slowly lifting gossamer curtains, curling and caressing the
black barges and rainbow-hued houseboats moored with
armthick rough hemp hawsers to the centuries old
manhole-sized mooring rings embedded in the stone walled
quai.

Curling ever upward past bridge abutments, up over
gracefully arched stone bridges with their black Parisian
lamp posts, up over the black bronze mailed knight and
rearing steed, up past the flying buttresses, and glaring
gargoyles to play with the upthrust towers and spire of
Notre Dame Cathedral. Then, the first strong clear sharp
light appears, setting fire to spire and tower edges, a
halo of gold and rosé grows glowing and brilliant
momentarily silhouetting the entire scene, a masterpiece in
all its brief glory for any artist, poet or author quick
enough to capture it.

Possibly no other people in the world take more sensual
pleasure in their river than Parisians. You see it
everywhere. You see it in just the number of occupied
marble benches that are placed discretely where river
lovers can see the prettiest river sights.

And speaking of lovers, they still unabashedly embrace
each on these same benches as they did in Hemingway's day
and long before that, the same way they will long after
this. They are all in tune with and acutely aware of the
nearness of their romantic River Seine, but as you might
expect they have eyes only for each other.

Even in adverse weather the river has charms. A windy,
brisk gray day in May the sky lays like a sodden wool
blanket over the Pont du Carrousel where cobblestones gleam
from recent rain. A cold wind rips down the river. No
bateaux mouches today.

The backpack feels heavy and good, the straps tight
against my shoulders. It's good to be in Paris again. Put
out all your antennae, I tell myself. Remember everything.
It may be your last time. And later after the sun comes out
and the day warms, I notice that no matter how hot it gets,
the marble slabs atop the Seine's benches always stay cool.
And someone always has time to take a moment out of his or
her busy day to stop and gaze out upon the river.

That afternoon I hike far along the Seine, marveling at
the variety of things people can think of to add to the
deck of their live-aboard houseboats to make them look more
homey, more like one's backyard. I see an amazing
assortment of cats, dogs, furniture, awnings, hammocks,
exercise equipment, kayaks, bicycles, children's Jungle
Gyms or playpens, barbecue grills, artificial lawns,
building supplies, Tiki torches, rows of flower boxes
usually containing bright red geraniums, small vegetable
gardens, various potted plants, and shrubs, including a few
palm trees. All the accouterments of most people's
backyards compressed neatly into the rectangular confines
of an elegantly kept, brightly painted highly livable river
barge on the river Seine parked in front of the romantic
city of Paris. Each family's island in the Seine. Or as some
Frenchmen might say with passion: 'Voila! Mon Ark!' And I
would have to add just as passionately, "Ah, oui, c'est la
vie!"

The Pont Neuf, with the sun about to slide into
the river.

Whenever the sun comes out, the river walkers are not
far behind. Everyone seems to wear a backpack, young and
old alike. They are as common in Paris as businessmen's
briefcases in New York. Unless, of course, you happen to be
a musician. They seldom wear a backpack. They carry an
instrument. You see them here and there along the Seine.
Solitary soloists playing their cornet, their French horn,
their flute to no one in particular. Just playing while
everyone else stops momentarily in the shade of the plane
trees to listen.

An artist and his easel here, a cello player there,
maybe some of it is inspired by the nearby Pont des Arts,
the no frills people-only bridge where a popular thing to
do is to carry bongo drums with friends down to the
riverside quai, sit on grass in the late afternoon sun and
beat out a rhythm. On the bridge overhead, street artists
paint painting after painting of the Isle de la Cité
and Notre Dame cathedral to sell to tourists. They can
paint this scene in their sleep. No one tires of it.

I stop to rest on the Pont Neuf, the oldest and most
famous bridge in Paris. It may be named 'New Bridge' but it
is Paris' oldest. King Henry III laid the cornerstone for
it in 1578 and his successor Henry IV galloped his horse
over the completed structure in 1605. You can still see him
astride his charger in all his glory from atop his tall
statue. It is in the middle, where the bridge crosses Ile
de la Cité. It faces towards the park called the
Square du Vert Galant, after Henri IV's nickname.

This bridge was made for river watchers and nature
lovers. Large half-moon-shaped stone bench balconies are
built into the side of the bridge so that they bulge out
over the river like the broad stern of a steamboat. They
overlook the river's beauty and the Musée du
Louvre.

When not watching the river, people sit in these
balconies to rest, as I was doing. A moment later a French
woman sat down opposite me to enjoy a banana that she took
out of her purse. I watched her carefully peel it, and knew
at once what might have happened had I been watching the
same scene elsewhere. Upon peeling the fruit there would be
a short, swift movement and the peeling would disappear
into the river. But not this woman who was completely
unaware of my watchful eye from the corner of my sun
shades. The banana peeling was quickly folded and put back
into her purse. That simple gesture suggests the kind of
pride Frenchmen have about their river and their city.

Each evening at sunset, Pont Neuf is crowded with
watchers lining its west side balcony boxes and railing,
all waiting for the spectacular moment when the sun slides
down in an orange ball of fire among the Left Banks'
painted barges and then into the Seine. At the precise
moment it occurs, everyone on the bridge holds their breath
as though expecting to hear the sizzle. But what everyone
hears are low murmurs of pleasure.

Like French women, all of Paris' bridges are beautiful
in their own right. But certainly one of the most striking
is called Pont Alexandre III, six bridges downstream from
Pont Neuf. Everything anyone ever loved about the baroque
is here attached to this bridge. Wildly rearing winged
horses, four on each side balance atop columns on each
side. A host of cherubs and bearded gods cavort along the
bridge balustrades over the water. Where appropriate, thick
layers of gilding emblazon the flying horses, and any other
scrolls, angels or ornaments that need this Midas touch.
Thirty ornate black lamp-posts with all the curlicues and
glass globes an artisan can imagine march across the arched
bridge in magnificent splendor. Indeed, this gentle
354-foot-arch was the longest single span ever attempted
until then. This architectural spectacle was created as a
centerpiece for the Paris World's Fair of 1900 in the hope
of surpassing the none too beauteous architectural feat of
the 1889 fair, the Eiffel Tower.

No indeed, nothing has changed. Hemingway saw it all. In
'A Moveable Feast' he wrote that he often walked the stone
quais along the riverbanks when he was trying to think
something out. Just being there on the Seine seemed to
help. He found it easier to think while he was walking, or
doing something, or watching people doing something that he
understood such as fishing.

In his 'Islands in the Stream' Hemingway has one of his
characters telling another that he can name all the bridges
over the Seine from Suresnes to Charenton, the latter
outside the center of Paris about four miles southeast of
Notre Dame where he used to sometimes fish.

Then, by way of his character he tells us that he really
can't name all of the bridges but he's got them all in his
head. He remembers that part of the river is ugly and many
of the bridges are too. But he had lived there a long time
and he used to walk the whole river, both the ugly parts
and the beautiful parts as well, that he has fished a lot
of it with different friends of his. He says he
used to fish it sometimes at Charenton and often walked the
river when he finished work until he got too tired and then
he would catch a bus part way back. Once he had money he
said they used to take taxis or horsecabs.

Quiet life
on the quays of the Ile Saint-Louis.

Certainly Hemingway was not one to pass up finding out
what kind of fish the Seine anglers were catching and
exactly how they did it. In 'A Moveable Feast' Ernest
describes it in more detail, telling about walking down the
stone steps from the park in Paris and watching the
fishermen there under the big, broad bridge, probably near
the Ile de la Cité. He said the better spots for
fishing seemed to change with the different flood stages of
the river. And that the fishermen knew where those spots
were.

He said that they all fished with long cane poles,
sometimes they were jointed so they could be taken apart.
And, everything about their end-tackle was light. The
leaders were very fine. For bobbers they used quill floats,
which of course would upend with the slightest tug on the
hook, and very small hooks with tiny pieces of bait because
what they were trying to catch were not large fish, they
were not much larger than minnows.

Ernest said they were a tiny dace-like fish called
'goujon' - from the French word 'goujon' suggesting that
the tiny fish resemble the small metal pins used to hold
two pieces of stone together. He said that when they were
fried whole they were so good he could eat a plateful of
them. The plump, sweet-flavored fish he found tasted better
than even fresh sardines because they were not oily and you
ate them bones and all.

In his book 'Secret Life of the Seine,' [Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company, New York, 1994] Mort Rosenblum
describes living aboard a houseboat on the Seine for
several years. He soon knew the river from one end to the
other. He said there are some forty species of freshwater
fish native to the river and a dozen more that were added.
Thanks to the influence of dams and pollution, by the time
the river reaches Paris, nine fish out of ten are either
tiny chubs or roaches, and he couldn't even imagine anyone
being interested in catching something called a
'roach.'

As Rosenblum said, in most places of the world when you
see a fisherman you almost always ask, "Are they biting?"
But on the Seine today, the question most often asked is:
"Are you really going to eat that?"

In the early '90's when he lived on the Seine the
pollution was so bad that a Frenchman told him that you
really don't have to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge
into the river, all you have to do is the backstroke.

Over the years since then, however, there have been
considerable efforts by the French to clean up the river
and restore its lost oxygen. Still, it's a constant uphill
battle. Seine fish that have survived are undoubtedly hardy
souls. Industrial pollution may make them glow in the dark,
but by golly they're still there, a tribute to
evolution!

Saltwater cousins of these fish are popular around the
Mediterranean. In Spain they are called 'boquerones' which
translates to mean anchovies. In English they would be
called whitebait. Considered a delicacy, these fish are
tiny herring and sprat fry but the generic term takes in
all small minnow-like fish.

To me they all taste much like the freshwater smelt
caught in fast moving cold clear northern Michigan streams
in the springtime. Hemingway certainly knew about these
Michigan fish and how they tasted which might explain his
fondness for the 'goujon' of Paris.

Papa never met a stranger. He said he knew several
Frenchmen who fished certain productive parts of the river
between the Ile Saint-Louis - the island just east of the
Ile de la Cité containing Notre Dame cathedral - and
the Square du Vert Galant. He said that travel writers
often thought that the fishermen along the Seine were
completely crazy because they never seemed to be catching
anything. The impression was that they were just fishing
for the fun of it. Which to some observers suggested that
they were engaged in an activity that was about as
worthwhile as meditating on your navel.

Papa quickly pointed out to them that not only are these
Seine fishermen quite serious, but they are also quite
productive. He said that many of them were men that lived
on small pensions, which had grown virtually worthless from
the inflation. They weren't fishing for the fun of it, they
fished for food. Others, who had jobs, still needed that
extra help feeding their large families. So they fished
when they had half days off from work.

Summing it up, Hemingway thought there was better
fishing at Charenton, several miles upriver where the river
Marne came into the Seine, and on either side of Paris. But
it was also fine fishing right in the city itself.

Today, I would be interested in his opinion of what has
happened to the Seine fishing. He probably would chalk it
up to pollution. He surely wouldn't chalk it up to
overfishing.

During the month I was there in May and early June I saw
only one lonely Seine fisherman sitting with his long cane
pole on the stone quai fishing practically in downtown
Paris. He looked like any one of many I once saw there
years ago except that he was a young man. Perhaps too young
to know there were no fish to be caught. I would have
talked to him about it but he was accompanied by a large
black mastiff. The dog was not interested in what his
master was doing. He sat with his back to his master
glaring eyeball to eyeball at me. And he wasn't smiling. I
never blinked, just kept walking. I'll always wonder if
that Seine fisherman ever caught anything, and if he did,
whether he ever dared eat it.

As soon as Bumby was old enough to enjoy the pleasures
Ernest found along the Seine, like any doting father, Papa
taught his son to enjoy the more meaningful things in life.
In fact even at Bumby's tender age they shared their own
kind of thing together. It was quality time, long
remembered by his son. No wonder Bumby came home with an
ice cream ring around his mouth and telling everyone how
'beau' life was with Papa. After all, Papa was teaching him
'neat' things. Fun things about which mothers might
disapprove.

Bumby never told anyone about them until long after he
was a grown man. Then, Jack Hemingway wrote of his early
memories of Papa in his own book: 'Misadventures of a Fly
Fisherman, My Life With and Without Papa.' [Taylor
Publishing Company, Dallas, Texas, 1986]

The book is good reading, especially the fishing parts.
He recalled that his first fishing experience was as a
spectator with Papa. What he saw and what they later did
made enough of an impression on Jack that he become an avid
sport fishing fan for life. He said that when they lived in
Paris and he and Papa went out for walks together, there
was always some kind of fishing going on along the
quay-sides and river embankments.

Papa may have started out intending to look for some
good reading material, but it often ended up with them
looking over the fishermen of the Seine. On his first trip,
Bumby said that Papa was intent on visiting the bookstalls
that lined the sidewalks along certain parts of the river.
One after another these black metal boxes sat permanently
attached to waist-high walls over the quais beside
the Seine. Most are about the size of a small steamer
trunk. Called 'boites,' their lids can be unlocked and
propped open to display a treasure-trove of exciting old
books and memorabilia.

Even in winter the bookselers
are on the Quai de Conti.

These bookstalls along the Seine are fascinating. From
them you can buy anything from old etched prints to long
forgotten maps and leather-bound books, or cheap
paperbacks, old Parisian playbills, artists' prints and
reproductions of famous oil paintings of all sizes; naughty
postcards and touristy ones, plus an enormous amount of
unusual bric-a-brac of interest to almost everyone enjoying
a casual promenade along the river walk in the dappled
shade of the plane trees.

Papa's moves on the bookstalls were more thought out
than most casual perusers. He sought quality merchandise.
Some 'boites' turned out better quality books than others
did. Consequently Papa had certain ones that he preferred
over others.

For example he enjoyed searching those opposite the
hotel that was right next door to our apartment, the
Hôtel Voltaire on the Quai Voltaire, for a definite
reason. He said it was because there were several
bookstalls along there that sold books purchased from hotel
employees - 'especially Hotel Voltaire, which had a
wealthier clientele than most.' When you are out looking,
you might as well shop for the best.

No matter where they went to these bookstalls, Jack said
that they always stopped to watch the fishermen along the
Seine. From Papa he learned to recognize these dedicated
anglers as a totally unique breed of fishermen. They were
men with weather-beaten faces, shabby clothes and boundless
patience. They fished with long bamboo cane poles and
goose-quill bobbers. They looked as permanent a part of the
scenery as the old trees. Jack thought that the fishermen
of the past along the Seine caught more fish than they do
today, recalling that some caught so many they sold them to
riverside restaurants who deep-fried them for customers. He
always considered them a fine treat and a favorite with him
and his father.

Jack recalls that sometimes the two of them would take
these paper-wrapped servings of small fried fish to one of
the benches on the Henry IV bridge overlooking the Seine.
After they feasted on the fries, father and son had a
contest to test their skill. Papa demonstrated. The object
of the sport was to lean over the stone bridge rail and try
to spit down the moving funnels of the fleet of passenger
steamboats called bateaux mouches passing under the
bridges.

These long, broad sightseeing boats lined with passenger
benches work the river from dawn to dusk and some continue
into the night, serving dinner guests. All of them ply the
river almost year around except in times of floods.

Hopefully most were oblivious of the Hemingway game
which really was tame considering a similar form of it
mentioned in Rosenblum's book about bateau life on the
Seine. His greatest dislike were the drunks who when they
saw him coming in his houseboat, liked to line up on the
bridge he was forced to go under and see which one of them
could as the French euphemistically
like to call it 'Faire pipi' on his boat as he passed
under. Maritime life on the River Seine isn't all bonbons
and potted red geraniums.

These days, the barges and
bateaux mouches do not have funnels.

The game Hemingway and Son were embarked on was far
tamer than that. The goal of the game was quite elusive. To
be able to spit spittle down a moving target such as this
was extremely difficult. According to his son, it was rare
that either of them were successful but when lightning did
strike and they succeeded, they rewarded themselves at the
closest café, usually a beer for Papa and a flavored
sherbet or bright red Grenadine for him.

Just watching the fishermen made Jack want to try it
some day but he never dreamed it would be possible so soon.
In those early years living in the flat above the sawmill
over the courtyard on Notre-Dame-des-Champs, he remembered
it as just a short walk from his godmother Gertrude Steins'
large commodious apartment where she lived with her friend
Alice B. Toklas. Jack felt that they lived in quite a
luxurious place on Rue de Fleurus.

From the Hemingway's small apartment he remembered the
Closerie de Lilas was hardly a block away and in those days
it was still just a simple, inexpensive café with no
frills. When the Hemingway's took off on a winter vacation
he remembered being carried along on ski trips to Schruns
where both Ernest and Hadley were trying to perfect their
skiing. Eventually Ernest got confident enough in his
ability to pack Jack along with him in his rucksack.

Hemingway was fortunate to be able to see the Seine and
Paris at different times of the year and to remember
details of how it made him feel. The way he described it
sometimes had to do with the way it looked and sometimes
with the way he felt. Three days before Christmas l923, The
Toronto Star Weekly published his article titled,
'Christmas On the Roof of the World,' in which he described
a Christmas in Paris:

"It is wonderful in Paris to stand on a bridge across
the Seine looking up through the softly curtaining snow
past the grey bulk of the Louvre, up the river spanned by
many bridges and bordered by the grey houses of old Paris
to where Notre Dame squats in the dusk. It is very
beautiful in Paris and very lonely at Christmas time."

In 'A Moveable Feast,' he found a way to solve his
loneliness by watching the fishermen and life on the river
with its colorful barges and the active families aboard
them. He watched the large black working barges that plied
this waterway, fascinated by their smoke-stacks that folded
backwards so they could pass under the bridges. Often these
tugs towed long trains of loaded black barges, moving
slowly past the stone quais of the river, past the plane
trees, the poplars and large elms that grew along the
quais. After seeing that he knew he would never be lonely
as long as he was along the river.

Years later, A. E. Hotchner, accompanying Hemingway on a
nostalgic return to Paris in 1950 said that to Papa, Paris
was synonymous with happiness. As always it was Paris and
the river. Paris, the Seine, and the value of what he had
found there:

"To have come on all this new world of writing, with
time to read in a city like Paris where there was a way of
living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was
like having a great treasure given to you."

And in summing up, the author of 'The Secret Life of the
Seine' expressed it this way:

"For all the beauty and drama of details that might be
put to words, the power of the river is the spell it casts.
Those who love it feel a part of something indescribable, a
secret source for the soul. Monet and the expressionists
did not define the Seine, or get beneath its surface. They
simply helped us feel it for ourselves."